


Put a Ring on It

by fuzzy_paint



Series: Getting Hitched [2]
Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-27
Updated: 2014-01-27
Packaged: 2018-01-10 03:42:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1154419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuzzy_paint/pseuds/fuzzy_paint
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jane makes Thor a wedding ring.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Put a Ring on It

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hariboo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hariboo/gifts).



> For Ari. I know we talked about this AGES ago, so it's super late, but still just in time for your birthday! 
> 
> A sort of prequel to [The Morning After](http://archiveofourown.org/works/577932), but it's not really necessary to have read that first.
> 
> Title is from Single Ladies by Beyoncé.

The explosion knocks both of them off their feet, but JARVIS has the shields up mere seconds after, protecting them from the worst of it. 

Jane stays on her back for a long moment, feeling a little singed. She touches her ear, covers it completely. The ringing continues, and doesn’t fade until after she sits up and shakes her head. The spinning of the room takes a moment longer to settle. 

Next to her, Darcy coughs until her eyes water. She wipes at the soot on her face, smearing instead of removing it. “Can we look into health insurance? The policy’s probably going to be insane, working for you as I do, but maybe they’ll give me deductions for hanging out with the Avengers all the time.” 

Jane ignores her, frowning at the ceiling. “Great,” she says. “Just great. I really thought this one would work.” 

“You could always go to a jeweler.”

Jane drags her hand through her hair, realizing after that her fingers are stained with ash. “You know I can’t.”

Darcy sighs, gets to her feet, and adjusts her glasses before holding out her hand. “Come on Boss Lady, let’s go eat something, maybe get a shower, maybe spend a little time with Thor. That always makes you feel better.” 

Jane protests, but only half-heartedly, when Darcy steers her out the door.

 

 

Feeling boneless, Jane settles against the pillows, and has to admit that Darcy’s right. Thor _does_ always makes her feel better. 

He nuzzles at her hip, on the verge of ticklish. She lays her hand against the side of his face to stop him before she starts to squirm, and he turns his head and kisses the base of her finger. He kisses it again, eyes half closed, and then presses his mouth against her palm.

Jane smiles absently, running her thumb over the edge of his beard and watching the glitter of her ring when she moves it. 

The heart of a star. Sometimes, it almost seems to twinkle when there’s no light to reflect, almost like a star in the sky, but stars don’t. They don’t. It’s all atmospheric effect, and has nothing to do with the star itself, but when she thinks of it more like a living heart, a living beating heart, it becomes both less strange and more so all in the same thought. 

“In Vanaheim,” Thor says into her palm, “they begin days of feasting when they share a bowl of honey mead, offered by the couple’s beloveds and collected from the hunang flower.” 

“Not from bees?” 

“Is that how it is done in Midgard? How strange.” He kisses her stomach, holding her waist, his thumbs fitting the curve of her body. “We could ask Hogun to officiate. He has the status. I am certain he will agree. He is a dear friend, and he does care for you-” 

Jane props herself up on one elbow. “You know I don’t need that, right? I don’t need nine ceremonies or nine rings or nine whatever. It doesn’t have to be such a big thing-”

“Jane. Is it so wrong what I wish the nine realms to see you as I do? To know how much I want you by my side-” 

She tackles him. Or tries to. Thor catches her against his chest, holds her there, and grins when she kisses him. She opens her mouth for him, but when Jane pushes at his shoulder, he gives, rolls onto his back, and they fall right off the bed. 

Neither of them care all that much. 

 

 

In the morning, Jane frowns at the melted mess on the tabletop, the latest in her attempts. Like the others, it’s not even circular anymore. At least it’s still not glowing orange-red, but when she tries to pry it loose, and she finds that it’s fused to her workspace, lumpy, misshapen, and not at all functional. 

Thor is a warrior. Thor is an Avenger and Thor is also the prince of Asgard. Even if he walked away from the throne, he cannot stay away for always. It’s his whether he wants it or not. He means to rule with peace, with wisdom and fairness, but if the last few years have showed anything, it's that there is always someone trying to be bigger and badder than those that came before them. 

She won’t let him go into battle with anything that’s going to shatter on him, or crumple, or become a jagged piece of shrapnel. 

She won’t.

Since Thor proposed a week ago, she’s taught herself metallurgy, convinced Tony to teach her welding without telling him why, torn apart blueprints of Tony’s suits, studied each part individually and as a whole, forged three new types of titanium alloys and then destroyed them in turn, borrowed Steve’s shield for two days, considered something bio-mechanical, something halfway living; none of it has held up to her tests. Her rigorous, often explosive, tests. 

If only she could search the nine realms for possible alternatives, recruit Sif and the Warriors Three to help her. There must be _something_. 

But Thor’s ring must come from Midgard. It is not quite a bride price or even a dowry, but it’s close enough that any distinction hardly matters. A marriage between them is a marriage between Midgard and Asgard, joining the two as sister-realms, as allies, and so Thor’s ring must come from Midgard and be of Midgard, no matter how easier it might be otherwise. 

She blinks when Sif sets a cast of Thor’s entire left hand on Jane’s desk. 

“I was just thinking about you,” Jane says. “I didn’t know you were back on earth. And should I ask how you got that?”

“Only momentarily to see Thor. And to bring you this gift, Jane Foster, from my brother and me.” Sif grins, eyes bright. “It was truly a pleasure.”

“Thor’s been banned from the lab,” Jane says. “He doesn’t know.” 

Darcy turns a page in her magazine. “He’s been baking. A lot.”

Sif laughs, but Jane frowns again, running her fingers over the lumpy remainder of her latest attempt. Steve would probably let her study his shield again, scrap off the thin coating to the vibrinium beneath, but Jane shakes her head - _vibrinium, of course_ \- grabs her coat and heads for the door. 

Darcy calls after her. “Wait. Where are you going?” 

She’s already out the door; she has to see a man about a metal. 

 

 

“Can I buy you a drink?” 

Wolverine eyes her, a cigar hooked between two fingers. The end of it glows, doing a slow burn to ash. Jane’s not even sure that’s legal here, but she’s not about to tell him that. “What do you want,” he says, gruff and short and was that a question? It didn’t sound like a question. Jane sits on the stool next to the Wolverine anyway. The bar isn’t that crowded, but all the seats near him are empty. 

At least they won’t be overheard. 

“Ororo said I could find you here? Actually, she told me it was inadvisable, but how are you with lightning? Oh wow, this is not going how it did in my head. I’m sorry. I-” She swallows and looks for the bartender, and when she doesn’t see him, she takes a deep breath instead. 

“Thor proposed. We haven’t really told a lot of people yet; well, anyone really except Darcy and Sif, who. I don’t think you’ve actually met. And we’re not supposed to tell anyone yet since we’re not technically engaged by Asgard’s standards - apparently he has to formally propose in front of a delegation? And then write up a legal contract? We’re still working on the details.” 

“Gotta point?” 

“Right. Uh.” She takes off her ring, sets it on the bar. “He went to a star and asked for its heart. For me. I’m still wrapping my head around it. How do you even get to the heart, core, I guess, and the density of even just a piece-” 

Wolverine clears his throat. 

“Sorry,” Jane says. She slides the ring back on her finger, twists it one way and then back again. “So he got me this amazing ring. Priceless, really. I know it’s not a competition, but it sort of is? I have to give something of comparable value, and from Midgard, and from me, specifically, or apparently his father can say no, and he… anyway, so I can’t just go to the jeweler down the street.” 

He takes the cigar from his mouth. “Adamantium. That’s what you want?” 

Jane nods. “I’ve looked into the alloys of Tony’s suits, but that takes damage. A lot of damage. And my attempts to recreate Captain America’s shield… let’s just say it’s been a bit of a problem. Since nobody really knows what it’s actually made of, vibrinium, and steel, and… something else. But no one knows how it was done in the first place.” 

She pauses to get her bearings, and to look for the bartender again. She needs a drink. 

“I’ve done the research,” Jane says. “I know adamantium is the best we could do to recreate that alloy. I don’t even think it’s going to be that hard, chemically, but you fight with it. You know it better than anyone. I don’t even need anything from you, just. How do you do with lightning?”

Wolverine finishes his beer, setting the stein back on the bar. “Buy me a drink, Doc. We’ll talk.” 

 

 

“Jane!” 

Jane groans and rolls over, tugging a pillow over her head and the blankets over that, burrowing back into sleep. Darcy rips them away and then yanks the pillow from her and tosses it to the far side of the room. 

Jane sits up, ready to scowl at her, but the room starts to spin. She touches her face. It feels both puffy and numb. “Oh. I think I’m still drunk.” 

“Oh,” Darcy says. “Is that why Thor’s making Wolverine waffles?”

“Not so loud,” Jane says, still holding her head. “Please.”

“The Wolverine is in your kitchen, Jane,” Darcy says. “He’s drinking orange juice. In your kitchen. You have a lot of superheroes hanging around lately. You know you can’t collect them all, right? And your lab, I don’t want to know what you were doing in there last night. It’s a disaster.”

Jane groans rolls until she’s on her side. She pulls her knees up to her chest. Maybe if she makes herself smaller, it’ll make the nausea smaller. The dizziness fade. “Darcy, stop talking.”

“I am not cleaning that up. The Intern can clean that up. And I don’t want-” She pauses for a long moment of blissful silence. “No. Forget that. Tell me everything. Does Thor know what you were doing last night?”

“Have I ever been this awful to you?” 

“Yep,” Darcy says. “Remember that one time in Tromsø? You _owe_ me.” 

Jane concedes the point. 

“Research,” she says and tries to crawl into the mattress. 

“Oh. Cool. That explains what happened to your lab.” Darcy wrinkles her nose. “Also, you need to shower. Badly.” 

Jane makes it through the shower Darcy insists on, barely remembers brushing her teeth, and has breakfast - brunch - with Logan and Thor and Darcy’s running commentary. The pancakes (the waffles are all gone) help make her feel a little more human, but the coffee does wonders, like it always does. 

On her way out, she kisses Thor absently, her focus across the hall in her lab, and shakes her head when Logan offers her some of his beer. 

 

 

Adamantium once hard can’t be reshaped. It can be reheated and broken with more adamantium, according to Logan (he wouldn’t tell her the details, and she didn’t ask after the first time) but won’t retain its original shape. She’ll have to keep it liquid until she can pour it into the mold. 

Theoretically, it should have been fine. 

Theoretically. 

Ears still ringing, Jane leans against the wall until her heart calms and she can hear again. She takes a few minutes to think, acknowledges her complete lack of progress - and the need for new working space - and then she’s out of her lab, asking JARVIS for a location. Not surprising, Tony’s in his lab. 

She hears the heavy beat through the walls, but can’t place the band or the song. Can’t even do it after she’s entered Tony’s latest passcode, and stepped into it, not with how he’s wired the sound system, bass pounding so hard it feels like her her bones are shaking into dust. 

“You’re going to go deaf,” Jane says, when the music cuts out. 

Tony grins at her, grease smeared on his cheek, his hair standing on end. He spreads his arms wide in welcome. “Dr. Foster!” 

“I need a new lab,” she says. 

“That’s the second one this week,” he looks impressed. “Careful, Foster, or you’re going to give me a run for my money.” 

Jane hesitates for only a second. “You made the metal for your suit, right? I could use some advice.”

“Is this why you haven’t been up to play? Are we making explosions with other people? Jane, I don’t think we should make explosions with other people.” 

“Can you keep a secret?” Jane frowns. “Wait, no, you couldn’t even keep your own secret identity secret. I need to make a metal. Adamantium, actually. Ever done it?” 

Tony sets down his wrench, interest bright in his eyes. 

“I don’t need a lot.” She thinks about Thor’s hand, the size of his finger, testing the width of her own. “A cubic inch, maybe? Less. It has to be liquid until I’m ready to pour it. I have the mold, but I’m having problems with containment.” 

“You know, Jane, you’re wearing an awfully big rock on your hand.” 

She blinks. Looks down. 

Oops.

“No one’s supposed to know,” she shrugs, “It’s not official yet? It’s… an Asgardian thing. He wasn’t even supposed to give it to me yet, not until the handsal - some formal proposal in front of all his family and friends. But he was… he was really excited about it.” 

Tony frowns. “JARVIS?”

“Of course, sir.”

Tony adopts a wounded expression. “My own AI knew before I did.” 

Jane shrugs. JARVIS keeps her secrets. JARVIS keeps all their secrets, but Jane’s been a little paranoid since SHIELD took her work in New Mexico, since Tromsø, that she only agreed to the space in Stark Tower if she had the right to deny him access to any of her work. 

Not that she actually keeps it from him. He thinks in different patterns than she does, solves problems differently, and a fresh pair of eyes when she’s stuck helps her see the path to getting unstuck. 

She’s done the same for him. And for Bruce. But it’s the idea of it that matters. 

“I’ll make it up to you. Help me make his ring?” She adds, “He doesn’t know I’m doing it.”

Tony grins. 

 

 

They get Bruce in on it - what project in Stark Tower doesn’t eventually involve all three of them? Occasionally they bring in their outside contacts, Erik and sometimes Betty when they need her expertise, but for the most part, it’s the three of them.

But even with their combined genius, they still blow up Jane’s new lab. Labs. Twice. 

They have JARVIS put up containment fields around it, deny access to everyone but them - JARVIS recommends denying their access too, for their own safety - but otherwise they can’t do anything else. 

“Yeah,” Bruce says, his back pressed to the wall, shoulders rounded in. He looks a little green and a little pale, but he’s not shaking anymore. The ash sits thick in his hair, dusty over his glasses and clothes. “That did not turn out how it should have.”

“Got it contained, buddy?” 

Bruce nods, hands still clenched into fists and pressed against his chest. “We’re not gonna be working in here anytime soon.” 

Jane’s shoulder’s slump. All her equipment. She has backups, and the schematics stored hard copy in her suite and in the tower’s mainframe, access through both JARVIS (restricted to Jane and those she specifies) and her own personal passcode, but her equipment. Her stuff. 

All that time it’s gonna take to rebuild…

Jane sighs and asks Tony for a new lab. 

 

 

Tony tells Pepper (and Rhodey and Happy) and Bruce tells Betty; Natasha somehow just knows, so of course Clint knows, and before she knows it, the whole team knows it, and Jane no longer knows who _doesn’t_ know. 

It leads to an impromptu party in their rooms. Thor accepts their congratulations with back-cracking hugs, handing out alcohol after. He doesn’t stop grinning all night; Jane feels warm all the way to her toes. 

It’s past two am when they finally usher all the well wishers out of their place, and Thor crowds her against the door. 

“Hello,” he says, his hands settling on her hips, pulling her flush against him. 

Jane grins, rests her hands on his chest. “I thought we were supposed to keep this secret,” she says. “We have enough food to feed us for a week.” 

“I was very hungry tonight,” Thor says. “Intensely so.” 

She raises an eyebrow and instead of admitting to anything, he lifts her up and steps in between her legs. He keeps her steady with one hand curled around her hip, and leans in close. 

“It is not tradition to announce it before the handsal,” he says, nuzzling at her ear. “but we make our own traditions, Jane Foster. We always have.” 

He touches her ring, pulls her hand to his mouth to kiss it. 

“Some day you’re going to tell me how you got it,” she says. 

He hums, kissing her again. “Would you like to see her?” 

“Her?”

“The star, of course,” he says. “I know you’ve wondered where she rests in the sky.” 

Jane pushes him away. “You can see it from earth? Show me,” she says. “Show me right now.” 

“We’ll call for Heimdall from the roof.” He sets her down on her feet, holds her steady for a moment. “And you’ll need to wear something much warmer.” 

 

 

The Bifrost deposits them south, further south than she’s ever been. It’s summer in New York, but in the southern hemisphere, in Cape Horn, it’s nearing the middle of winter. When she breathes out, she can see it in the air. 

They stand on a cliff, the wind biting and strong, pushing them back from the edge. They find shelter from it in a bank of trees nearby. Thor sets Mjolnir aside and curls an arm around her and holds her close. 

This far from any towns and any electricity, stars fill the night in a wash of bright lights. Thor traces his finger across the night sky, bending close so they might see in the same field of vision. He stops, pointing at a cluster of stars, and then a little over. “She rests to the side,” he says, “In Asgard, she shines brighter. Perhaps because she is closer or perhaps because she is dearly loved. Her light once saved our realm, many years before my father’s father took the throne.” 

It is only a tiny light, nearly blotted out by the brighter stars nearby, but once Jane knows where it is, she sees no other. It has to be all in her head, but her ring feels warm, almost joyful. 

“How far,” Jane says, “and what kind of star, and how did you-”

Thor laughs, holding her close. “Some day, Jane, some day soon, I will take you to meet her.” 

 

 

They get through a few more explosions, and a few more walls knocked down, and Jane and Bruce both get a crash course in smelting, and Tony teaches Jane more about welding, using his high-tech toys instead of what he calls her ‘duct tape and rubber bands,’ Dummy and Butterfingers supervising with their fire-extinguisher close by. 

She loses two inches of her hair, and Bruce almost turns green at least once more. He has to leave for a few hours, and returns jumpy and hesitant. They have to rebuild the liquid adamantium’s containment system twice, and recreate the plaster for the mold from materials that can withstand the heat before the metal cools. 

It’s still three more days before they’re done, before Jane breaks the plaster, pulling it away, wiping the last bits of it from the metal with her fingers until it’s clean and Thor’s ring rests in her palm. 

“Here comes the bride, darling,” Tony says. 

“It’s heavy,” she says, “I didn’t know it’d be this heavy.”

“Ball and chain,” Tony says, and Bruce silences him with an elbow to his side.

Jane’s attention is entirely on the ring. Thor will wear this. Thor will put this on in front of all their friends and family and he will proclaim his love for her. In all the nine realms, if he has his way. And no one in the nine realms is going to stand in their way, no one is going to stop them, not vengeful lords of death or dark elves trying to destroy the universe or disapproving fathers, no one. 

 

 

She finds Thor in their living room, watching TV. Jane leans against the door frame, just looking at him. He’s highlighted by the glow of the TV, his black t-shirt stretched tight over his chest, his hair back in a ponytail. He’s watching one of his cooking shows, his recipe journal open in his lap. She can smell dinner from the kitchen, fresh bread and something else she can’t identify by scent alone. Maybe Italian.

In her pocket, she fists the ring, the metal warming to her body. 

“Hey,” she says, eventually. 

“Jane!” He makes room for her on the couch, but she sits on the coffee table in front of him, blocking the TV. 

He turns it off and sits up, reaching for her. She catches his hand before he touches her, her thumb soothing over his knuckles. 

When he proposed, when he first came to her and sank down to his knee, offering her the ring, Jane stared and stared and stared and when she realized what he was doing, she didn’t even let him get the words out completely. She just jumped on him. And kissed him.

They’d talked about it, marriage, and what it would mean to Jane and her career, and Thor and his realm, and their future as a couple if they didn’t, but she hadn’t expected a ring. Not like this. 

His fingers curl around hers. “Has something gone wrong?” 

“We are doing this enormous thing,” she says. “We are…” 

She takes his hand and slides the ring on his finger. “I know it’s not a star, or anything huge like that, but it will never break in battle. And it will never rust or wear away. And I. Thor, yes. Yes.”

He holds his hand up, like a new bride might, turning his hand this way and that, and then her threads his fingers in her hair, cupping the back of her neck. “You have done your science for me. I could not ask for more. I could not want for more.” 

With an answer like that, how can she not climb into his lap, ride his body back, kissing and kissing and kissing?


End file.
